Hellbound – a Review

I know of two movies going by the name Hellbound. One that I’m sure everyone knows—right?—is Clive Barker’s sequel to his Hellraiser classic horror. The other is a new documentary called Hellbound, written and directed by Kevin Miller. I almost added “in which he explores the doctrine of hell” because I believe that is how Miller wants the public to see the movie, but after having watched the movie carefully I don’t think I would naturally describe it that way. None of the important issues of hell—its biblical basis, its historical development, its critics and the evidence they cite—are really broached in what I would call much depth. While I genuinely appreciated aspects of what Miller was trying to say, I came away with real reservations about much of what was presented here, and certainly about the way that it was presented.The good
Let me demonstrate that there are things about Miller’s documentary Hellbound that I really do appreciate by starting with those.
This is a project that someone really needed to make. The evangelical handling of the subject of hell is absolutely terrible—dogmatic, resting so much conviction on such a flimsy biblical case, and way, way too much suspicion and marginalization of dissenting voices, casting dissenters as theological “liberals” no matter how evangelical their actual convictions may be. I’m not the universalist Miller is but I certainly appreciate that a universalist is in a position to know these things. Universalism may be a poor understanding of the biblical material, as far as I am concerned, but the way to respond to that doctrine is not by simply excluding from the discussion on divine judgment those who hold to it. As someone who has reached the honest conclusion that the biblical passages which speak about final judgment clearly teach annihilationism, I know only too well how shallow, dismissive, and hostile supporters of the evangelical establishment can be when they encounter ideas that are not their own. And Miller’s criticisms here, presented in his own words and those of his guests—many of whom I would again disagree with on a whole range of theological issues—deserve to be heard, often and clearly, so I had no objection to them being made repeatedly here. Greg Boyd’s comment was particularly welcome: even though universalists carry a pretty hefty burden of proof given some prima facie facts, “that doesn’t mean that they should be squashed as heretics for suggesting the idea.”
Again, although I’m no universalist, I also have to stress that I wouldn’t fault a movie like this merely because it promotes universalism. If I thought that people shouldn’t seriously consider or even enjoy the presentation of alternative views on this subject, there would be very little point in my writing and speaking about my own view (for then I might be reaching out to people who do what they ought not, namely, give my view consideration). Insofar as it further exposes to us those who defend universalism from a more or less evangelical perspective, I think we can be grateful. And I say “more or less” because it’s pretty clear that some of the guests have little or no time for evangelicalism, with contributors as diverse as David Bruce of Hollywood Jesus, Robin Parry (a.k.a. Gregory MacDonald) who wrote The Evangelical Universalist, and Frank Schaeffer who spoke in particularly acidic tones about evangelicalism, giving away a sense of revulsion at the conservative evangelical he once was. Those evangelicals who want to talk about hell and present themselves as really understanding the issue, if they are not conversant with what these people say then I think they really lose the right to participate as competent members of this discussion, as it were. You have to know where everyone is coming from and what they have to say if you’re going to presume to speak with any sort of authority on the question of hell.
Obviously a movie like this is primarily theological in thrust so a good deal of the material was about theology—although not the better part of the material unfortunately (see below). But there was a fair amount said about the more general issue of how people disagree with each other, the certainty with which they do so and the way they react to opposition on an issue that they care about and why. Getting a good, empathetic, and even pastoral grip on that issue is perhaps as important as getting a grip on the theological issue that people are disagreeing about in the first place, so I was grateful for the coverage given to this facet of the discussion as well.The bad
But all is not well here. Despite the “infotainment”1 packaging that is common in documentaries, Hellbound really is meant to tackle a serious theological issue. In both this documentary and his interview on the Rethinking Hell podcast with Chris Date, Miller tells people that part of the difficulty with getting Christians to talk and think about hell is getting them to think about punishment and justice in God’s plan of salvation more generally, and also in breaking through the prevalent view of the death of Christ in evangelical theology. He wants to challenge the lens through which evangelicals view these issues, not simply the conclusions they reach. Most evangelicals, Miller correctly notes, view the cross of Christ as a way in which Jesus stood as a substitute for human beings, suffering and dying in their place. This way of thinking about the atonement places violence at the centre, Miller tells us, and it really makes God the author of it. It’s a punishment-focused view of justice, where God saves people only by punishing a substitute. Punishment must happen or else salvation doesn’t. Similarly, when it comes to what happens to people who aren’t saved it is all about satisfying God’s thirst for punishment; he can’t rest until punishment has been meted out.
I am intentionally describing things in somewhat provocative language because that is precisely how universalist opponents describe it—and that’s when they’re being gentle. Miller is on record putting it this way:
If you favor preventive measures of justice, you probably fall into the eternal torment or annihilationist camp. If you gravitate toward curative measures, you are likely a universalist.
Thus the scene is set: If you prefer vengeance over healing, then you won’t be a universalist. Naturally we all like the sound of healing, so let’s be universalists! I’m fairly sure that’s how the pitch is supposed to work. One comment that immediately comes to mind is that I have difficulty relating to this whole way of doing theology. Surely we should not affirm any given view as true because we “favor” it or “gravitate toward” it.
If you are trying to figure out what the Bible teaches—and, as most evangelicals see it, that’s really the heart of the theological task—then the question is about something external to us, whether we like it or not. As John Stott was careful to stress, despite his own emotional difficulty with the doctrine of the eternal torments of hell, “My question must be—and is—not what does my heart tell me, but what does God’s word say.”2 But I’m prepared to cut Miller some slack here. Maybe by “favor” he means something like personally-favor-because-you-think-it’s-true-and-you-favor-things-that-are-true.
There is something to be said for Miller’s observations. There certainly are movements within Christianity that seem to focus more on the harshness, the judgment, the punishment and condemnation from God than on anything else, which naturally results in a distorted theology. Those who picket the funerals of children or soldiers, or those who run “hell houses” designed to scare people into a decision for Christ, are clear and unwelcome evidence of this.
But it’s an easy mistake to react to the error of one extreme by rushing to the opposite extreme which is still an error. Caricatures of traditional portraits of God, drawn from the worst examples that exist in contemporary fundamentalism, shouldn’t simply be reacted to in knee-jerk fashion by immediately embracing their mirror image. One cannot plausibly doubt that the authors of the New Testament certainly did at least partly see punishment as a facet of divine justice; granted it’s not the full picture, but it is surely part of the picture. Jesus notoriously claimed that God would send the unrighteous away into eternal punishment.
Along with Rob Bell and other critics of contemporary evangelicalism—and yes I’m aware that at times I am a critic of contemporary evangelicalism myself—Miller is very happy to underscore the zeal and dogmatism of people who don’t want to wrestle with the hard questions and tensions but who want to confidently declare the final answer. But this is one point where he and similar critics need to take their own concerns seriously. If too many evangelicals latch onto the judgment of God and make that their controlling picture, leaping from there to answering too many questions with dogmatic answers, then they are likewise not entitled to latch onto references to God’s love and make a similar leap to confident answers. It’s all very well to say that they’re only asking questions or encouraging others to claim the right to ask such questions—which is a right they certainly have—but it’s another to imply in almost sneering tones that, because of the biblical notion of God’s love, we must reject the concept of a just, judging, and even punishing God in preference for one who ultimately saves everyone. Mainstream evangelicals are not the only ones who need to be willing to wrestle with concepts of God that they don’t “gravitate toward.” Miller, like other Christians, surely has to wrestle with the fact that Scripture says God is not only loving but also just and that he engages in punishment. If evangelicals don’t get to exclude one in favor of the other, then neither does he.
This brings me to the main thing I want to say here. It’s an attractive set-up for the universalist to say that if you believe in harsh, nasty justice then you might interpret the Bible as teaching eternal torment or annihilation, but if you believe in a loving God and in a different model of justice then you should interpret the biblical passages as supporting universalism. That’s simply not true, however. Miller never really explains why all other versions of final judgment fall apart once we give up the purely punitive picture of God. For example, in its 1995 report, The Mystery of Salvation, the doctrine commission of the Church of England tentatively affirmed annihilationism, saying that “hell is not eternal torment but it is the final and irrevocable choosing of that which is opposed to God so completely and so absolutely that the only end is total non-being.” Here we see the classical portrait of God as the ground of being: he is pure being itself, so the complete rejection of God means rejecting the source of our own existence, resulting in our own non-existence. The idea is not punishment but self-exclusion. It’s true—in my view, at least, which I have defended elsewhere—that a penal substitutionary view of the cross gives us good grounds for adopting annihilationism, but it’s not true that accepting annihilationism forces us to accept a penal substitutionary view of the atonement. C. S. Lewis—a traditionalist, I believe— suggested that hell is “locked from the inside,” the idea being that despite seeing hell for what it really is, the damned still persist in rejecting God anyway and remaining where they are. I find that proposal implausible but the point is that there is a range of possibilities about what God is like and just how punitive justice really is, whatever one’s view of hell. Telling people that they have to choose between a God who’s all about punishment on the one hand and universalism on the other, aside from underestimating the prominence of biblical talk about punishment, is simply not correct.
Another issue that needed more probing was the nature of Gehenna. Brian McLaren makes a brief case that Gehenna, the word translated “hell” several times in the gospels, is literally nothing more than the Valley of Hinnom. All of Jesus’ warnings of divine judgment, or so the message seemed to be, are exhausted in their fulfilment at the destruction of Jerusalem in the first century. These comments beg for a response. Yes, the actual Greek term gehenna is derived from the Hebrew gai-ben-hinnom or “Valley of the son of Hinnom” (or just gai-Hinnom, Valley of Hinnom), later becoming gehinnom and gehenna in Greek. Yes, the Valley of Hinnom is south of Jerusalem and is historically associated with slaughter and, yes, this can inform us as to the word’s likely intended meaning. But it’s a basic error to think that whenever a word is used the speaker or writer has in mind the historical origin of that word. Gehenna had come to refer to the fate of the unsaved after death in the Jewish literature that was prevalent in the first century, and there were several views on what Gehenna was like. Some though it was eternal torment, some annihilation, and a few even thought that some people would come back from Gehenna and be saved. But it wasn’t simply the Valley of Hinnom, and there is no voice in the documentary to substantiate or challenge comments like these. Similarly, yes, there are some sayings of Jesus that are seen by some to refer to the end times, but which actually refer to the destruction of Jerusalem in the first century; his comments about the so-called “great tribulation” are a classic example. But a brief look at some of the evidence which is being swept up here as all about the Roman sack of Jerusalem would at least give viewers pause. , for example, warns people not to fear men—including the Romans, presumably—who can kill the body but cannot kill the soul, but to instead fear the one who can destroy the body and soul in Gehenna.
The kind of interaction with the issue that I’ve offered above—namely, critical even if brief—is the kind of thing that was lacking in this movie. There were so many responses and criticisms that could have been made to virtually all of the provocative suggestions made by Miller and those who spoke in favor of his view. But virtually none of the many possible objections were given coverage, and the closest thing to such coverage that was given was Robert McKee, an atheist, with his comments on the importance of human decisions. This is partly why the movie isn’t an exploration of the issue of hell at all, but rather a chance to listen to what is essentially advertising for universalism.
In fairness, Miller interviews people who enjoy a fairly good reputation among many evangelicals and who hold to the traditional view, like Hank “Bible Answer Man” Hannegraaf. But why feature people like Robin Parry in favor of universalism, people for whom this is their primary area of scholarly expertise, but popular radio hosts like Hannegraaf for the other side, who (as far as I know) really isn’t viewed as having any particular area of scholarly expertise? This made for a fairly predictable set of conclusions. I predict that as more people watch Hellbound, this reaction will be a common one.The ugly
But beyond the problem of what I see as a lack of depth and critical engagement, even for a documentary of this nature, coupled with what looks like decidedly one-sided coverage of questions, what really left an unpleasant taste in my mouth and what sullied my overall impression of this movie was an overriding distortion of the intellectual options in the game by what must surely have been the intentional use of easy targets and attacks on low hanging fruit. Consider the fact that the movie opens with scenes of the Westboro Baptist church, the notorious crew whose mantra is “God hates fags,” protesting a 9/11 memorial gathering. Yes, really. Naturally Miller gets their side of the story by provoking some fairly predictable verbal shots from them as they stand there with their signs. But this hardly makes things balanced. One of the other staples used to represent the “other” view or traditionalism, whom Miller is opposed to, is Bob Larson, infamous for doing battle with demons on television as “the Real Excorcist.” Bob defends the traditional view by saying that he knows hell is real because he casts out demons from hell who don’t want to go back there. This explanation is accompanied by clips of Bob in action, replete with his blinged-up cross, pressing his Bible against the heads of the possessed as he orders the demons around. Again, yes, really, this is actually in the movie. Westboro Baptist and Bob Larson appear numerous times. We also get shown a hell house, a group of Christians who get young people into what is basically a carnival house of horrors depicting all sorts of horror and violence in an effort to give them a taste of what hell is like.
This is just monstrously unfair. Westboro Baptist? Arguably the most hated group in America? You chose them as representatives? And Bob Larson? I can’t think of a single respectable writer or speaker defending the traditional view of hell who would defer to this guy. “Nutjob” is a word that quite easily comes to mind. Why not people like Robert Peterson, Christopher Morgan, Don Carson, Douglas Moo, or anyone with a bit of scholarly respectability instead? You really, really think that people who picket funerals or cast out demons on a television show are better representives? How is this not an obvious case of poisoning the well?3
Miller has defended himself against such criticisms a few times that I know of, and each time the defense is more or less the same. First, people like Larson, he says, use the same basic arguments that other traditionalists do, so what’s the big deal? Second, there just aren’t any universalist equivalents to feature! If he could have found a nasty bunch of universalists, Miller says, he would have included them, but universalism—and annihilationism, he was good enough to mention to Chris Date in his interview on Rethinking Hell—just doesn’t foster that type of thing. But this defense just won’t do, for a couple of reasons.
First, it frankly doesn’t matter if the likes of Bob Larson or Westboro Baptist would use the same arguments that other traditionalists use. (It’s not true, by the way, that the arguments are the same. As I indicated earlier, respectable traditionalists do not argue for the traditional view of hell on the grounds that they cast out demons from hell who don’t want to go back there.) The more important point which does the emotive work is that they are the ones giving the argument, regardless of whether the arguments are the same as those used by traditionalist theologians. Imagine if I had a guest on a news program to explain his economic theory, which was very similar to mainstream theories accepted by respectable economists but the guy I invited on to the show was a notorious KKK member who sat in front of the camera in full uniform. If people asked me why I chose him, it would do no good to reply that his theories really aren’t that different from popular theories. By choosing a person like that I’m facilitating an association in the minds of viewers between his views on this subject and all the nasty things we already associate with racism. Similarly, by offering Bob Larson and Westboro Baptist and hell houses as representing the traditional view, there’s no real doubt that Miller is trying to create an association between traditional views of hell and raging bigots or crackpots who put on shock-shows.
But, second, it’s really not the case that there are no universalist equivalents of these people. You’re thinking wrongly about the objection if you think that since there aren’t universalists who picket funerals or do outlandish things in public, there’s no equivalent. Westboro Baptist and Bob Larson are types of fundamentalists, whereas universalists tend to be liberals so extreme examples of universalists aren’t going to look at all like extreme examples of traditionalists. But they exist. Why did Miller not have several examples of Unitarian Universalists4 speaking for his view? Perhaps because it would associate his cause with extraordinarily liberal Christianity (if it could be called even that). But that’s the point: association. The documentary encourages readers to associate traditionalism with its very worst representatives, and compare it with the very best representatives of universalism.
Moving on from the unfortunate selection of representatives, I was particularly struck by what looks for all the world like inexcusable editorial dishonesty in Miller’s portrayal of Mark Driscoll, the preacher that progressive Christians love to hate, let’s be honest. The scene started out fine. Greg Boyd was being interviewed, commenting on the hostile reaction you can encounter when you challenge people’s beliefs. When people have a lot invested in being right about hell (or anything else), you’re going to get their amygdala working,5 triggering a chemical reaction in the “reptilian” brain stem and they’ll start raging. Fine, that’s a fair enough comment on one of the factors that comes into play in dogmatism. But then Miller immediately cuts to footage of Driscoll shouting at the top of his voice at his congregation, “Who do you think you are?! You’re not God! You’re just a man!” Miller then cuts back to Boyd who is still speaking and explaining that the stronger the new perspective is the more the opposition gets to the point where people don’t even want you to consider the new idea. You know, people who get ferocious when their theology is challenged. Like Mark Driscoll. You all saw him shouting just now, right? You saw him raging when his beliefs are challenged, right?
Actually no, you didn’t. What you saw was edited footage from a video clip where Driscoll was in fact shouting at young men in his church who mistreat their girlfriends or wives, and the clip closes with him calling on them to repent and to apologise to these women.6 Of course, the viewer of Hellbound doesn’t know this because all the surrounding context is removed. All they see is Boyd—innocently, remember—talking about how people who are resistant to new ideas can react to them by raging, and then footage of Driscoll as an example of that raging and hostile reaction to new ideas. I don’t often go all drama queen and say that something a person said “disgusted” me, but I was pretty disgusted by this. I couldn’t see any possible way that Miller would not realize how he was portraying Driscoll here. So before I published this review I spoke to Miller directly, to allow him to say something in his defense. He explained that he was well aware that he was taking Driscoll out of context (that’s what he told me), and that really what he was doing was trying to say that Driscoll’s shouting and raging was a “metaphor” for the way that he deals with people like Greg Boyd. He metaphorically shouts and rages at them. Do I buy this? Well, I’m prepared to believe that this is how Miller rationalised what he was doing here, but it’s not excusable on these grounds. What about the other scenes we’re shown: Protestors, angry ministers closing the door on cameras and so on. Is any of this just meant to serve as metaphor? I don’t believe anyone would expect any viewer to see it this way. Boyd is shown saying that when people’s beliefs are threatened, they rage because they’re hostile to other perspective. Driscoll is shown as an example of someone doing exactly that. This was really, really below the belt. I haven’t seen Miller’s other documentary, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. But the affect that Hellbound has had on me is rather like the effect of watching Bowling for Columbine by Michael Moore. I was genuinely interested in watching this movie, but now I’m highly suspicious from the outset of the next thing I see from Miller, such as Expelled, for example, which is a shame.
(It’s worth noting, by the way, that in Hellbound Driscoll is on record saying that while he thinks Boyd’s view—annihilationism—isn’t correct, far from raging against it he’s happy to work with people who hold that view, so he rages neither literally nor metaphorically at it!)
Anyway, enough with the ugly.
And then the end, the outcome of the documentary, is pretty much what you expected. Universalism is good. It enables us to see everyone as created in God’s image. It enables us to believe in a God who resurrects and restores. Of course, the viewer might think, “But don’t other views teach that too?” But this is ultimately made to get people to warm up to universalism. I don’t object to that. The viewer may have some concern at closing assurances such as, “There’s nothing to fear.” Nothing? Not even a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries? Is it not a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God? But, these misgivings aside, the documentary leaves the viewer with questions—homework, perhaps—that really are worth pursuing. Although I think Robin Parry is dead wrong, his closing remarks are among the best in the movie. Don’t watch this and then rush off into universalism. Read what people have said, on each side. Think about it, pray about it, but just be open to the possibility. Here evangelicals should be listening. Being open to the possibility that their theology is wrong is really not something a lot of us evangelicals are good at. So take this advice. I don’t think universalism is true, but if I had never been open to the possibility of it being true, my conclusion that it’s not true would be simply a product of my will. Closing comments that ask us to question the idea that we know who’s in and who’s out are surely on the mark. I happen to think evangelicals are already a bit past that, and only the incurably dogmatic would make any such claim to knowledge, but it’s good advice nonetheless.
So that’s the good, the bad, and the ugly. I wanted to like this. Honestly I did. And the movie delivers some of what I hoped for. But in spite of its great moments, the potentially intellectually stimulating viewing experience was ruined by far too many flies in the ointment. It raises good questions, and provides some very wise caution about confidence and dogmatism. But the framework in which it does so is not ideal by any means. The level of theological rigor here is low. The treatment of opposing people and opposing points of view is seriously disappointing. Yes, dogmatic fundamentalism is bad. But so is a critique of that fundamentalism and the wider evangelical community that’s simplistic, caricatured, one-sided and which at times, I’m sorry to say, looks calculated to mislead. Can I recommend an alternative documentary to watch in place of this one? No. Maybe one day I’ll make one. Watch this one if it interests you, by all means. Hellbound should have been much better.
Glenn Peoples

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“Infotainment” is a neologistic portmanteau of information plus entertainment, referring to “information-based media content or programming that also includes entertainment content in an effort to enhance popularity with audiences and consumers.” See Wikipedia, s.v. “Infotainment.” [↩]

David L. Edwards and John Stott, Essentials: A Liberal-Evangelical Dialogue (Hodder and Stoughton, 1988), 314-315. [↩]

Published by Glenn Peoples

Dr. Glenn Peoples runs the popular blog Right Reason and podcast Say Hello to my Little Friend. There and elsewhere Glenn writes and speaks on theology and biblical studies, moral and social philosophy and philosophy of religion. He completed undergraduate studies in theology at the Bible College of New Zealand (now Laidlaw College), followed by an MTheol and a PhD in philosophy at the University of Otago. Glenn's desire is to equip Christians to critically engage their culture and their critics, but he insists, "the first thing we need to engage is the person we see in the mirror. Criticising and challenging our own belief, our own faith, testing it, probing it, getting it right. Why do we believe what we believe? Does it make sense? Is it true? Are we repeating what out own church culture expects us to say, or have we seriously asked for ourselves whether or not this is what Scripture teaches? Challenging outsiders can be a sport, but challenging ourselves has got to come first, and the way that so many Christians think about hell is an area where they simply haven't done that." He and his wife Ruth have four children and they live in Wellington, New Zealand.
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